


The Finer Things in Life

by brookebond



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Fluff, Just cute shit, M/M, Puppies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 03:32:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17236583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brookebond/pseuds/brookebond
Summary: When writer's block strikes, Arthur will attempt anything.





	The Finer Things in Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WritLarge](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritLarge/gifts).



> I had the wonderful prompt of 'puppy'. There's a million different ways that could go but hopefully this turned out as cute as I wanted it to.
> 
> Thank you citrine for looking over my outline and helping guide me to the end, pinky for your cheerreading (what would I do without you?), and lbswasp for the speedy beta. You are all fabulous. I don't have the words to explain how much your help means to me.

“Mother fucker.”

Arthur pushed away from the desk, barely resisting the urge to slam his laptop shut. It was infuriating. After everything his publisher, Mal, had put him through in an attempt to cure his writer’s block—skydiving, white water rafting, cooking classes, Bob Ross-esque art classes, pottery, horse riding—Arthur was ready to throw in the towel completely. There was no point calling himself a writer if he couldn’t write anything, not even a dirty fucking limerick.

Knowing only frustration lay ahead, Arthur grabbed the essentials and left the house. He had no plan, no purpose for leaving the house other than to stop staring fruitlessly at the screen. It had worked for him in the past, long before his first book ever made it anywhere other than his hard drive. He was pretty sure it wasn’t going to work this time, though. But at this stage, he’d try anything.

Half an hour later, Arthur was hiding in the stacks of his local library, fingers tracing along the spines of all the beautiful books; wondering whether any of these authors struggled as much as he did, or if words flowed freely for them.

Arthur shook his head, determined to not let his thoughts fall into their old toxic traps. It was a fickle path, one he knew well. He needed to keep busy and, being surrounded by books, Arthur had a genius idea.

“Excuse me,” Arthur said, resting his arms on the front desk as he smiled down at the elderly librarian.

“Yes?” they replied, looking over the top of their glasses. “How can I help?”

“If I wanted to help out, reshelving or doing a stocktake or anything that needed to be done around here, how would I go about doing that?”

The librarian slapped a sheet of paper on the desk, forcing Arthur to remove his arms and stand straight as they spoke rapidly. He nodded at the instruction to fill it out and bring it back to Joe who wouldn’t be back for two weeks.

“Thanks,” he said with a parting smile, folding the paper and slipping it into his back pocket as he made for the exit. Two weeks wasn’t all that long but it wasn’t going to solve his problem anytime soon. Arthur needed a fix and he needed one fast.

As he pushed the door open, a blast of cool air hitting him and reminding him he’d forgotten a scarf when he left, Arthur noticed the bulletin board. It was covered in fliers, some announcing events coming up for the library, others offering tutoring services. One in particular caught his eye; a fairly unassuming piece of paper stapled haphazardly to a corner of the board that read:

**ARE YOU A LOVER OF THE FINER THINGS IN LIFE?** ****  
**ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A COMPANION?** ****  
**DO YOU LIKE TAKING LONG WALKS?** ****  
**IF YOU ANSWERED YES TO ALL THREE QUESTIONS, GET IN TOUCH WITH EAMES AT MOMBARKA* TO DISCUSS ADOPTING A DOG TODAY.** **  
** **TO GET IN TOUCH, TAKE A NUMBER BELOW.**

***MOMBARKA IS AFFILIATED WITH THE AMERICAN KENNEL CLUB THROUGH THE GERMAN SHEPHERD DOG CLUB OF AMERICA.**

Arthur frowned at the flier, wondering if there was any way this Eames person knew their flier started out sounding like an escort service. But, despite the rather ill-worded flier, Arthur tore one of the numbers off the bottom, slipping it into his pocket along with the form.

—

Arthur stared at his laptop, willing words to appear on the screen that didn’t suck in the worst possible way. Everything was drivel. Every single word he had forced out that morning was shit and there was no saving it, even Mal wouldn’t be able to find one single grain of an idea amongst the heap of cliched crap.

He dragged a hand through his hair, eyes flicking to the library form he still hadn’t filled out. It had been a week since he’d gone there in search of solace but every time he looked at the piece of paper, Arthur couldn’t bring himself to fill it out. His writer’s block had started to infect other aspects of his life. He was certain it wouldn’t be long before he was sitting in a chair, staring out a window, unable to actually do anything about the life that was passing him by.

Sighing at his morose thoughts, Arthur opened the top drawer of his desk and slid the form into it, a small piece of paper fluttering to the floor with the sudden movement. It was the number from the strange flier at the library.

Before he could think about it too much, Arthur smoothed the slip of paper out on his desk and dialled the number, not really sure what he was doing but feeling somewhat satisfied that he was doing _something_.

“Hello, this is Eames,” a beautifully accented Englishman answered.

Arthur blinked, gripping his phone tighter as he swallowed and tried to reply.

“Hello?”

Arthur opened his mouth, ready to respond but only a small huff of breath escaping.

“I’ve seen this sort of thing in the movies but I didn’t realise it actually happened and I hate to be trite but I _can_ hear you breathing.”

“Sorry,” Arthur responded. “I didn’t actually have a plan for if someone answered…”

“So, you rang but don’t know why?”

“I do know why,” Arthur huffed, crossing his free arm over his chest.

“And?”

“I saw your flier at the library.”

“Ah, yes. Genius bit of marketing, if I do say so myself.”

“You do realise it reads like you’re offering something completely different.”

“Got your attention, didn’t it?”

Arthur snorted, unwilling to answer that question. Obviously it had gotten his attention. He wasn’t the kind of person that rang random numbers just for the hell of it. “Can I come see the dogs?”

“Does tomorrow work for you?”

—

It wasn’t a long drive to the farm; just long enough for Arthur’s nerves to really settle in, for all the reasons it was a terrible idea to play out in his head. By the time he pulled up outside the house, he was a ball of anxiety, fingers tapping an unsteady rhythm on the steering wheel.

“Don’t be stupid,” he muttered to himself. “Everything is going to be fine. You’re just at a stranger’s house in the middle of nowhere and no one knows where you are.” Arthur closed his eyes briefly before steeling himself and pulling the key from the ignition. “He could be a murderer, or part of a cult, or… he could be the most attractive man in the world.” Arthur paused, his hand on the door handle as he watched a sandy-haired, well-built, gorgeous man walk towards his car. “Holy fucking shit.”

Arthur climbed out of his truck, fumbling and narrowly missing his fingers as he slammed the door shut.

“Hello there, you must be Arthur.”

“Hi, yes, I’m Arthur,” he said, stumbling over the words as he shook the proffered hand. “You’re Eames?”

“The one and only. Come on, I’ll give you a tour.” Eames turned and strode off, leaving Arthur to stare in bewilderment.

It took a few seconds for Arthur’s brain to catch up with his body, realising he’d been following Eames without listening to a word that was being said. He nodded, humming in assent at something Eames was saying but Arthur had no clue what it was, not since Eames’ ass was in front of him, snug in a pair of jeans and said perfect ass taunting him with each step.

“And these here are the little rascals.”

They had stopped in front of a pen with six puppies all ambling over each other, yipping and playing. It was absolutely adorable and Arthur couldn’t stop himself from crouching down. They were all gorgeous, each one of them black and tan and excited by the new person. Arthur clutched at the chicken wire fence, fingers curling into the pen enough for one of the puppies to lick at his hand, tongue rough and tickly.

“Hello beautiful,” Arthur murmured, reaching over the short fence to scratch at the puppy’s head.

“That one is Athena,” Eames said as he stepped over the fence and sat in the middle of the pen. He was instantly swarmed, all six of the puppies climbing on him and each other. “There’s also Demeter, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, and Hermes.”

“Got a thing for the Greeks?”

“Let me guess, you’d go for a classic name like Spot, or maybe Lassie,” Eames teased, gesturing for Arthur to climb into the pen as well. “They won’t bite and if they do, you let them know it’s not okay. Right?”

Arthur nodded, grateful he’d worn an older pair of jeans as he settled himself on the grass. It took a little while for the puppies to realise there was another person in there with them but, when they did, it was chaos. They were yipping and bouncing at him, pawing at his knees and demanding attention.

One stood out, though, as things Arthur connected with usually did. “That one’s Artemis,” Eames said, noting where Arthur’s gaze had been. “She’s a little bit more reserved than the others but it’s not because she’s sick. Just quieter.”

Arthur picked her up, holding her gently as he brought her closer to his face. She was gorgeous with two tan circles around her eyes, a black muzzle, and dark eyes Arthur was positive he was going to lose himself in.

“I think she likes you,” Eames said, leaning over to get a closer look at Arthur and Artemis.

“Well, I like her too,” Arthur replied, bringing Artemis closer and pressing a kiss to her head. “What do I need to do to adopt her?”

“Come on, we’ll get you started with the paperwork.”

—

The paperwork didn’t take long at all, in the end, and when Arthur got home from the farm, he was bursting with energy so he did the only thing he could think of.

He wrote.

The words flowed like they hadn’t in months, desperate to be released from the confines of Arthur’s eager mind.

He continued writing for hours until finally resurfacing, hungry, thirsty, and surrounded by darkness, the laptop screen the only light in the room. He checked the time, mind rebelling at the fact that it was four in the morning. But he was settled, soul soothed by the fact that he had written something and it had felt good, indescribably good. It didn’t matter if the words themselves were brilliant or anything other than just words on a page, Arthur was pleased with what he had produced. It had been months since anything he had come up with hadn’t made him feel ill reading over it. Mal was going to be over the fucking moon.

Arthur attached the document to an email, telling Mal he’d had a breakthrough and that he wanted to scrap the entire original idea because this was going to be far better.

The whooshing sound of the email being sent was like a switch letting Arthur know it was perfectly alright to collapse into his bed and pass out for the next sixteen hours, a smile firmly fixed on his face.

—

The next two weeks passed like a blur.

Arthur spent most of them collecting bits and pieces Eames recommended for Artemis and working on his manuscript. Mal had been ecstatic with his first outline, pointing out places that would be perfect to go into further detail on and Arthur was in a much better place with it. There was even a possibility he would have a whole first draft done before the New Year actually rolled in. It meant he was on schedule, even with all the calls and visits out to the farm to see Artemis. Well, Arthur used those visits as an excuse to get to know Eames more because there was no denying that he was the epitome of Arthur’s type. Arthur was just trying his luck and something about this puppy seemed to make things happen.

“Alright, we’ll try to get her to sleep. It’ll make the whole trip easier if she isn’t anxiously whining in the backseat. Then, when you’ve got time, take her to a vet.”

Arthur nodded, following Eames as he led the way back to Arthur’s car. They’d discussed what Arthur should do the first few days with Artemis at his home. He had it all written down on his fridge in bullet points so he could have the satisfaction of ticking the tasks off as he went.

“If there are any problems, just give me a call. Okay?” Eames said while he set Artemis in the cage Arthur had set up on the backseat and convinced Artemis that it was time to sleep.

Arthur was more than a little nervous about this whole venture, but Eames seemed so sure everything was going to work out perfectly that Arthur couldn’t bring himself to voice a single concern. Well, other than the millions of questions he’d asked over the past two weeks.

“Not that I’m saying there will be problems,” Eames continued, “but I’m only a phone call away.”

If Arthur knew better—and he had gotten to know Eames fairly well recently—he would say Eames was nervous as well, uncertain about letting go. Sensing that made Arthur brave.

“Why don’t you come see how she’s settling in? Maybe this weekend?” Arthur suggested, closing the back door and leaning against it, crossing his arms over his chest in an attempt to feel more casual about inviting Eames to his house.

“Really?”

Arthur nodded.

“I’d like that.”

“Great,” Arthur said, smiling as he moved to get into the car. “It’s a date.”


End file.
